The Presbytery of Dakota
Nongeographic
The many acts of injustice that occurred in the past, with the coming together of Native American culture and immigrants from Western Europe, are widely known and well documented. But through the efforts of clergy and lay leaders of the churches of the Presbytery of Dakota, places now exist for healing. People are invited to come together and walk humbly with their God so that through the sharing of Christ’s love, justice might be done.
Makasan Presbyterian Church, in Oglala on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, has joined in partnership with the South Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) in this important effort.
This cooperative effort led to the construction in 2000 of the Pine Ridge Retreat Center and is at work in the construction of a multipurpose building atMakasan Church.
In the past year, a group of medical professionals from a Covenant Church in the Minneapolis area came to Pine Ridge looking for ways they might lend support to medical personnel working with Indian Health Services on the reservation. Another group of nurses and faculty from Augsburg College (ELCA) in Minneapolis came to travel with Community Health Care Providers to learn how best to care for people who need health care but want to remain in their own homes.
A group of women from a Presbyterian church in Minnesota came to spend a week sewing with women in the Wounded Knee District while a group from an ELCA congregation in Iowa worked with Dirk Garnier, trustee of Makasan Presbyterian, to complete the multipurpose facility at the church. Groups from Hastings, Nebraska, the Presbytery of North Central Iowa, and the Presbytery of Baltimore have also worked and carried out programs at Makasan Presbyterian.
In working together, ecumenically and across cultural lines, the presbytery and its partners seek to meet Micah’s challenge — do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with their God.
Presbytery Staff
Rev. Simon Looking Elk, stated clerk
PC(USA) General Assembly Staff
Amelia Dye, BOP
Cindy Ealy, OGA
Elder Ann Earnest, FDN
Gracious God, we ask that you would continue to challenge us to work together in order that we might right the wrongs of the past, and by your Holy Spirit be led to do so with kindness and humility. Amen.
Ps. 22, 148 Ps. 105, 130
Jer. 11:1–8, 14–17
Rom. 6:1–11; John 8:33–47
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